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Amd ryzen is here

My friend Jim Roseberry (studiocat.com) built and tested a computer using the AMD Rysen, and had this to share about the results:

QUOTE: Jim Roseberry "Going to assemble/test an AMD Ryzen 1800x based DAW today. AMD has made big performance claims for this new CPU. If audio stress-tests live up to the hype, it'll offer performance equal to the Intel 6900k ($1k) at half the cost. From a performance perspective, the past decade has been ruled by Intel. It would be nice to see serious competition from AMD. Intel socket 2011-3 (X99 motherboards) have the advantage of quad-channel RAM... and currently offer more advanced options (U.2, Thunderbolt-3, 128GB RAM, etc). I'm skeptical... but anxious to see the results."

THE RESULTS

QUOTE: "OK folks, the old adage, "If it's too good to be true..." is certainly applicable. The Ryzen 1800x is particularly good at heavy multi-threaded applications (video rendering). What it's not good at is heavy multi-threaded applications at ultra low latency audio settings. Loaded a heavy audio project as a stress-test. Listening to the entire mix... all seemed to be going well (playing at a 48-sample ASIO buffer size - RME UFX). Solo'd the kick drum... and found that there was some subtle garbling of audio. Removed a bunch of processing... and the garbled audio was still happening. For what we do, this rules out the Ryzen CPUs.

Another thing to keep in mind, the X1800 is "bleeding edge" (first gen motherboards with few BIOS revisions)... and applications not compiled/optimized with the Ryzen architecture in mind. At one point (running the latest beta BIOS), I changed settings in the BIOS... and SMT (Hyper-threading in AMD speak) stopped functioning all together (even though it was set to Enabled). Had to flash to the last release version to resolve the issue. In Sonar Platinum, things like Ctrl+ dragging PhoenixVerb (copying the plugin to another track) caused Sonar to crash. There were also lots of "general error" messages that popped up during use. These types of issues aren't AMD's fault, but working around them makes hour-to-hour use of the application somewhat of a pain.

Running an Intel 6850k, none of these issues were present. Back to the audio stress-test, when running the Intel 6850k, audio was completely glitch-free when solo'ing the kick drum. For video rendering (as other benchmarks have shown), the 1800x handily bests the 6850k. Both the 1800x and 6850k are $500 CPUs (thus the comparison). Another thing to keep in mind is that well-spec'd Intel X99 motherboards offer Thunderbolt-3, U.2, and other high-end options currently not available on X370 boards. Intel owns Thunderbolt... and I don't think they're going to be in any hurry to license it to AMD. I have no doubt that video editors will love Ryzen. Hard-core audio folks will want to stick with Intel."
 
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What it's not good at is heavy multi-threaded applications at ultra low latency audio settings. Loaded a heavy audio project as a stress-test. Listening to the entire mix... all seemed to be going well (playing at a 48-sample ASIO buffer size - RME UFX). Solo'd the kick drum... and found that there was some subtle garbling of audio. Removed a bunch of processing... and the garbled audio was still happening.

Well that doesn't sound good (no pun intended). We'll see if that's a problem with Sonar, but not Cubase which I'm using. I also use a USB interface, so there's a lot of different factors at play. Could also be a driver issue, the platform has only been available for three days. But nevertheless, not good news.
 
Does the Intel X99 plateform quad channel ram vs the AMD Ryzen difference mean anything as far dealing with samples?
 
Good to see audio reviews coming out.
I trust these reviews so much more since they are our apps.
J.Rosenberry should have his own thread here.
Scan Audio too. Bring in the builders..

The fact that higher buffers shows excellent results means these CPUs will just get better and hopefully by the time APUs with 6 Cores show up.

The best part about Ryzens release is I got a pair of i7 4790k CPUs and 128GBs of DDR3 RAM for 875 bucks.
Yeah it's old tech but works great for me.
Don't need Z170, Z270 and who knows what chips for Cannon Lake.

Thanks Creativeforge...
 
Jim has been formally invited, these guys are so busy, however I do hope they find time and energy to peek in from time to time!
:2thumbs:
 
Could sell lots of DAWs here, especially for guys just needing VEP Slaves.

I conveyed the message, as I agree! I have been using Jim's rig he built for me since 2011. Still running Win7 64, for music and graphic design. Solid as a rock. Great support. And he's a professional musician too, so he understands.
 
Life on a fine tuned 7 DAW is great.
Use 2 x 7 DAWg's for spares, etc. but 8.1 live as it reboots from an M.2 in seconds.
Loads are especially fast using NCW.
Fastest rig I ever had.

I fear change...
 
Just curious, any Ryzen results been posted for use as a VEP Slave? My samples are outgrowing my iMac and I'm ready to add a 2nd computer.
 
Good to see audio reviews coming out.
I trust these reviews so much more since they are our apps.
J.Rosenberry should have his own thread here.
Scan Audio too. Bring in the builders..

The fact that higher buffers shows excellent results means these CPUs will just get better and hopefully by the time APUs with 6 Cores show up.

The best part about Ryzens release is I got a pair of i7 4790k CPUs and 128GBs of DDR3 RAM for 875 bucks.
Yeah it's old tech but works great for me.
Don't need Z170, Z270 and who knows what chips for Cannon Lake.

Thanks Creativeforge...

These are no slouch. Right now a good bang for the buck.
 
I know they are great CPUs.
I just don't see Workstation boards or APUs yet.
But bought a 1600X for BioStar ITX w/ a Low profile RX480 and Corsair Bulldog for a gaming HTPC for my son to build.
He wants a DIY so of course those multicore games and M.2s are going to be speed demons.
It will be his first time building.
Glad to help out.
 
For me later this year.
I don't care much for motherboards with perpendicular RAM DIMMs.
Not good for 1U builds.
 
Do you guys think this new amd chip will be sucessfull in general? Will it get some traction and be a viable option against intel? or too soon to tell?
 
Do you guys think this new amd chip will be sucessfull in general? Will it get some traction and be a viable option against intel? or too soon to tell?

I think it's too soon. I've heard a lot of people are not happy with Intel's near-monopoly pricing, so they might be more than glad to jump onboard the AMD train. But we have to remember that we are the minority here, if we're talking about general consumers, it's the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 markets, laptops and other OEM devices which will decide how AMD will do.

PS. CPU is already here, but still waiting for the mobo ;)
 
I think it's too soon. I've heard a lot of people are not happy with Intel's near-monopoly pricing, so they might be more than glad to jump onboard the AMD train. But we have to remember that we are the minority here, if we're talking about general consumers, it's the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 markets, laptops and other OEM devices which will decide how AMD will do.

PS. CPU is already here, but still waiting for the mobo ;)

interesting.
 
Digital Archivers in Vegas I know built an 1800X and are pissed as they can't get more CPUs?
Not sure exactly why but these folks stream lots of files and use various compression Algos and RAID 6 Cards.
They saved 1500 on one machine and want to step away from Xeons.
So Ryzen will be popular regardless of audiophiles.

If Apple was smart they'd make profit again on MacPros using 1800X CPUs.
Intel better make a special deal with Apple quick.
 
Ok, so here are my first thoughts about Ryzen 1700 / Asus PRIME X370-PRO / 16GB Crucial 2400MHz combination.

After a bit of a hassle with the memory (the manual suggested using slots 2 and 4 which didn't work for me, the machine wouldn't boot) I got it up and running and everything seemed fine. However, I think there are some driver issues with the MB and my somewhat old 1st gen Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. The official drivers were horrible on W10 even before I upgraded, so I had to hunt down the beta drivers I was using before, which of course I hadn't saved anywhere. Now they seem to be working OK, although my dreams of working with 16 or 32 buffer with a sample rate of 96kHz seem to be unrealistic. I'm not that experienced so I'm not sure if the culprit is the old interface or the new platform? I did a small test and it seems to handle 64 buffer on 44.1kHz very well with 7 Kontakt instances (Cinematic Strings 2), 6 Play instances (Hollywood Strings) and two FX channels with QL Spaces on them - but I think this should be expected on a high end CPU. Cubase seems to take about 20% of CPU, and VST Performance shows similar percentages. I'll do some more testing on a real world situation later on when I find some more time away from my day job, studying and being a family man at the same time ;)

Oh, and I didn't feel the need to overclock, since the processor seems to OC itself (boosting up to 3,7GHz) when needed.
 
Please do share as you go along.
u-He is already in love with the Ryzen scores they had.
My i7 4790k/i7 5775C are bothe my current favorites.
They just don't have enough core, must have more....
 
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